Things Her Ghost Wanted to Say
by fireandice722
Summary: "With a newfound fury, she leaped into the air, body illuminated by solar light, slinging fans of burning blades in a deadly barrage at the surrounding enemies. As the ghost's optic trained itself on her, he thought she looked like an avenging angel." An exiled hunter and her ghost struggle to connect as she is consumed by inner demons.


If you have the Thin Line handcannon from the Spider and have read the lore tab, the italicized parts will make more sense. If you havent read the lore tab, I'd suggest looking at it on the Destiny Companion Collections section or on D2 data base before reading this, thought it isn't necessary for the story.

* * *

 _Talk to me about how you feel._

The hunter stomped through the dying grass fields of the Cosmodrome, her cloak swaying lightly in the afternoon breeze. She spun her prized handcannon, Crimson, around her finger absently and without a word. Her ghost floated alongside her, concerned. They had been ejected from the Tower, forced to fend for themselves in the wild. It wasn't for no reason, her ghost recalled. She had been in possession of a weapon strictly prohibited by Vanguard policy.

The ghost had tried to tell her she didn't need Crimson. Surely he was enough to heal her, yet she insisted. He wasn't sure why she would even want such a vile weapon when he was capable of doing the same thing it could do. Did she feel powerless dying over and over again? Did she crave power over pain? Did she want to feel self-sufficient? The scary thing is, her ghost had no idea. All he knew was that something was eating away at her, making her angry, and she wouldn't tell him what it was. He didn't understand his guardian, couldn't see why she wouldn't let him in.

"You know we can talk about this right?" the ghost said. "I know that you're upset. I just need to know why you did it. Why you felt so inclined to keep that gun despite what I warned you of. You can trust me." She said nothing, still trudging along through the landscape, silent as always. "You know I'm here for you right?"

The hunter's answer was a small grunt. The conversation was over. If it could have been called a conversation.

* * *

 _I wish we could go home._

The ghost sighed resignedly as he watched over the hunter in the dead of night. It had been a few days since they had been exiled from the Tower. The ghost yearned for the safety of the Last City, where they didn't need to look over their shoulders constantly. Without the security of the Tower, the ghost didn't know where home was anymore.

The past couple nights had been a struggle for the hunter, but he stood by her. At this moment, she was asleep in the back of an abandoned car that they had been lucky enough to find. The metal shell had moderate damage from the weather, the windows grimy and impossible to see through, the metal rusted by rain, but it was enough. She slept with her hand cannon in her hand, her cloak draped over her like a blanket of sorts. If he looked past the violent weapon in her grasp, her ghost thought she looked like a normal woman in her sleep—peaceful even.

Then, suddenly, the sound of a trip mine explosion ripped through the night. The hunter opened her eyes, awakened by the sound of her trap grenade being triggered. Someone was coming. The hunter flung open the door to the car forcefully, hand cannon aimed at the ready, but she was struck down by wire rifle shots as soon as she had left the car. The hunter had fallen before she could even fire a single round.

The ghost peered out of the car to see a couple of Vandals jeering. He waited patiently for them to leave, which took about ten minutes, then went out to his guardian's crumpled form to revive her. She sat up with a stoic, neutral expression as life filled her once more. She looked unphased, but her eyes showed something else. It was an emotion that only her ghost knew she possessed: fear.

"Thank you," she said softly, standing up and preparing to move.

"Anytime," the ghost told her, surprised at her gratitude. It was about the tenth time he'd had to resurrect her since they'd been exiled.

In that moment he realized the Tower was not his home—she was.

* * *

 _You're on a rampage and I'm not comfortable with it.  
_

The hunter's ghost approximated that she had killed roughly a few dozen Fallen, several Red Legion stragglers, and even a couple of Hive since they had begun their trek to the Farm in the EDZ. They weren't even halfway to the farm, and the hunter had already killed so many foes. More than any strike mission she'd been on in the past. The total had to be at least a couple hundred and counting. At first, her ghost thought little of it, but he soon realized that she was becoming more violent than ever before.

In the middle of their journey, when the hunter was ambushed by a squad of Red Legion, her ghost noticed something drastically different in her. The way she lashed out with her knife, the haphazard fashion in which she hurled incendiary grenades upon the Cabal, and the ferocity with which she unleashed her burning golden gun shots upon the onslaught of Legionnaires and Phalanxes was unlike anything the ghost had ever seen. It was like she was on a one woman warpath.

When the dust settled, all that remained were scorched Cabal corpses, some still ablaze from the hunter's vicious offensive. She walked through the burning wake with little remorse, even carelessly stepping on the arms of some of the bodies. One foolish Legionnaire groaned in agony, his arm swathed in smoldering flames, reaching out as if to beg for mercy. The ghost couldn't help but feel horrible for the suffering creature.

The hunter scoffed and shot him in the head with her gun.

* * *

 _I don't think this is why the Traveler chose you._

While the hunter said nothing about it, her ghost knew she was in pain. She had just killed an innocent child.

He knew she hadn't meant to. There had been a group of Wizards enacting some sort of Hive ritual. She had no way of knowing the pile of gunk in the center of the summoning vestige was a child kidnapped and corrupted by Hive magic. It was some sort of sacrifice to a worm god involving the sacrifice of an innocent being, but all the hunter had seen was vermin that needed to be eradicated. A couple of swarm grenades did the trick. They shredded the Wizards, as well as the child.

When the the child's screams came and the gunk encasing him melted away, all they could do was watch in horror. The boy screamed in agony as he burned to death, and there was nothing they could do to save him. Now it was night, and the hunter still did not speak. She lay on a bed of moss in a forest clearing, eyes closed, but her ghost knew she was awake. He could feel her restlessness.

He felt the urge to tell her that this was a sign—that the Traveler was trying to tell her not to abuse her power, as she'd been doing since they set out towards the Farm. Then he saw her grief stricken face, her eyes squeezed tightly shut to hold in tears, her bottom lip quivering slightly. He saw his guardian hurting, so he relented. An "I told you so" was not appropriate.

He couldn't hurt her any more than she was already hurting herself.

* * *

 _You know I'll never leave you, right?  
_

 _But sometimes… I don't like the look in your eyes.  
_

The ghost knew that his hunter was now long far gone. Once again, the hunter found herself in a clash with minions of the darkness. This time, they were Fallen, from the House of Kings. There was something near evil in her as the gang of Fallen swarmed her. Just like with the squad of Red Legion, she slayed them all with reckless abandon. Ether burst from the heads of Dregs and Vandals, spraying across her vest, arms, and face as she slashed away with a stolen Captain's sword.

She seemed numb to the mayhem she'd created. The bodies accumulated in the grassland, as the hunter continued her reign of chaos. She stabbed a Servitor in the eye with pure malice, the force of the crackling arc sword causing the creature, as well as the blade, to shatter violently. Many of the Fallen attempted to retreat at the sight of this, but she did not let them. Her ghost could have sworn he heard one of the Vandals beg for mercy in Eliksni, but he, like all the others, died from a flaming bullet.

Finally, there was only one lowly Dreg attempting to flee; a runt—small, and weak, by Fallen standards. The hunter simply stabbed him in the back with her knife, lunging lightning quick. The Dreg let out a scream of pain, but the hunter simply twisted the blade, slowly and deliberately, before finally pulling it out and giving the poor creature a touch of mercy, as it fell upon the ground with a sickening thud.

As the ghost followed the hunter away from the battlefield, he saw something that horrified him. Her eyes were full of bloodlust, begging for more death. She now only seemed a shell of the guardian she once was, her composure that of a killer waiting for her next victim. No longer was she a protector of the Last City—she was now reduced to an animal that relished in death.

And for the first time since he'd found her, the ghost was afraid of her.

* * *

 _I'm here. I'm still here.  
_

 _Are you still here?  
_

The ghost was confused, as he hovered next to the hunter. She was standing on the edge of a cliff, looking down at the rapids a few dozen feet below. They had been here for a while, as the hunter stood gazing downwards, speechless and motionless. "What are we doing here?" the ghost asked curiously, finally needing an answer.

"What if I jumped right now?" the hunter asked, her voice emotionless.

"I would revive you," the ghost answered, still puzzled. Wasn't it obvious?

"What if you didn't?" she then asked him. She looked at him, tears welling in her eyes. Then, the ghost understood why they were here.

Despite all the knowledge he had, for once, he didn't know what to say.

* * *

 _I don't want to lose you to this._

Just a few kilometers away from the Farm, and thus safe haven, the duo came across a battle between Hive and Fallen. It was a brutal entanglement, but the hunter, knowing that there were EDZ refugees nearby, decided to engage both of the groups to save as many people as possible from the crossfire. It made the ghost proud that her desire to protect people still prevailed.

The ghost followed his swift hunter into combat, and thus found himself in the heat of conflict between the two groups. This was nothing new to him—he wove through the air, close to his guardian, as he always wanted to be. What happened next happened by a cruel twist of fate.

Maybe it was an accident. Maybe it was intentional. There was no way to know, but the next thing he knew, the ghost was struck by a wire rifle shot. He fell to the ground instantaneously.

"NO!" his hunter screamed, as her ghost hit the ground. With a newfound fury, she leaped into the air, body illuminated by solar light, slinging fans of burning blades in a deadly barrage at the surrounding enemies. As the ghost's cracked optic trained itself on her, he thought she looked like an avenging angel.

Having scared off the rest of the Hive and Fallen, the hunter ran to her ghost, fear overwhelming her fair features. "You have to be okay!" she said in a panic, scooping him up into her hands. "I can save you! Let me bring you to the Farm, I can get them to help you!"

"No… too late…" the ghost told her.

"No, don't say that!" She was sobbing now. She'd cried before, but never like this. "I can fix this! I can save you, like you've always saved me! Please! Stay with me! I know I've been ungrateful for you but I can't lose you!"

"Don't apologize… Just…promise me…" the ghost started, "...that you'll...be better. Live a good life."

The hunter nodded, tears streaming down her cheeks, eyes shining with pain. The ghost felt horrible knowing he was the source of it. "Thank you…for being… my guardian…" There was so much more to say, but the ghost could already feel himself fading away.

And with a final image of his hunter looking down on him, heartbroken, the ghost blinked out.

* * *

 _I love you._

Hawthorne's scout thought no one had survived the crossfire between the Hive and Fallen. A skirmish of that scale usually saw no survivors. But as the scout surveyed the area, he was drawn to the sound of a woman's heart wrenching sobs. As he followed the sound, the scout was met by a tragic scene.

The woman, he ascertained from his limited knowledge of guardians, was a hunter, if the tattered cloak hanging upon her back was any indication. She was kneeling on the ground, holding something, and crying in utter sorrow. The scout couldn't help but wonder what would make a guardian cry.

As he approached the hunter, he saw that she held a ghost, which, from his understanding, was a companion of sorts to guardians, to bring them back to life. Was she crying for fear of death?

But then she raised the shell to her lips and kissed it softly, and a fresh wave of tears came falling down. She whispered three gentle words to the shell, the words every person yearned to hear, and the scout suddenly understood what he was seeing.

The only thing that could bring a guardian to their knees was love.

* * *

Please review! This is my first Destiny fanfiction, thought I'd try something different. I just knew I had to write something when I saw the lore for Thin Line.


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